Dust Devils

by Janz, Jonathan

  He was simply in a dire situation.

  Martha Black had cinched the crook of her elbow around Jack Wilson’s throat, so that he was facing Cody as the vampire woman’s hostage. But rather than a gun poised against his temple, Martha Black’s long, serrated fangs hovered only inches from Jack Wilson’s neck. She was peering up at Cody through filthy strands of blond hair that were matted with gore. How the gunshot to the head hadn’t slowed her down more, Cody had no idea. Perhaps the more often they regenerated, the more powerful they grew.

  Whatever the case, it mattered little now. What mattered was that his father was about to be bitten again, but Cody had a feeling this time the damage would be bad enough that Jack Wilson wouldn’t walk away.

  “Put the scythe down!” Martha Black growled.

  Cody let it clatter to the floor.

  “Now drop that gun,” Martha Black commanded in a deep, buzzing voice.

  Cody nodded, began to lower the Colt.

  “No,” his father grunted. “She won’t kill me.”

  Martha Black increased the pressure on his dad’s throat, the scimitar teeth drawing nearer to his flesh.

  Cody frowned. “She sure looks ready to me.”

  “I’ll be one of them soon,” his father rasped. “She—she needs a tribe. She won’t kill the only one left who’s like her.”

  “You don’t think I’ll bite him?” Martha Black asked. She snaked her forked tongue out and licked a glistening streak along Jack Wilson’s jawbone.

  “Dad…” Cody began.

  “Shoot her now, son. You’re good enough to do it.”

  Whether his dad meant Cody was a good enough person to save them or that Cody was a good enough shot to hit Martha without killing his dad, Cody had no idea. He readied himself for the shot, keenly aware of Marguerite’s unmoving form on the bed to his left. If Cody missed and things did go awry, Cody would have to interpose his body between her and Martha Black before the vampire woman could hurt Marguerite.

  A quarter-inch from the side of his father’s neck, Martha Black’s mouth opened wider, her lips stretching in a hideously mocking grin.

  Cody swung the Colt up and fired.

  The slug tore a flap of skin from the woman’s scalp, the point farthest from his dad’s face. The sound was deafening in the bedroom, and perhaps this was why Martha Black let go of his dad to clamp her hands over her ears. Jack Wilson stumbled toward Cody. Sidestepping his dad, Cody fired again, but the vampire woman had raised her arms to shield her face. The bullet splintered her right forearm and sent twin fountains of blood pumping from the entrance and exit wounds. But Martha Black staggered toward Cody, a look of ruthless determination in her lambent eyes.

  Cody began to squeeze the trigger again but caught himself just in time. His father straightened in front of him, the scythe gripped in both hands.

  Martha made a grab for it. Cody almost risked another shot over his father’s shoulder, but at the last second he held off. His dad whipped the scythe handle straight over the vampire woman’s head, and before she could fend it off, he chopped down. The curved blade furrowed the middle of the woman’s face, cleaving her from the top of the head to the roof of her mouth. The blade chunked free with a pulpy, squirting sound. The force of yanking out the scythe blade knocked his dad off balance. Before his father could stand erect again, Cody took aim with the .38.

  He put one in her left eye.

  Her face a horror of gushing wounds, Martha Black reeled toward the wall. Before she got there, his father swung the scythe sideways in a whistling line. The curved blade slashed Martha Black’s neck cleanly this time, the head tumbling at her feet before her body hit the floor. A second later, Martha’s body did fall, the spurting stump of her neck showering the armoire in a cheerful red gush.

  Jack Wilson let the scythe clatter to the floor. Cody holstered the Colt.

  Cody’s dad leaned against the foot of the bedstead, his face weary but smiling. “We got ’em, didn’t we, boy?”

  “You got ’em, dad.”

  Jack Wilson shook his head and opened his mouth to say something, but at that moment the doors of the armoire behind him were flung open and a pair of powerful arms enfolded him.

  Adam Price sank his teeth into the side of Jack Wilson’s neck.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Speechless, Cody fumbled for the Colt in his holster, but the sight of his father writhing against the vampire, the noise of Jack Wilson’s screams, robbed Cody of what composure he still had. Price burrowed deeper into his father’s neck, gobbling like a starved wolf, and just before Cody got the .38 out and brought the business end to rest on Price’s face, the vampire had already wrenched Jack Wilson’s head violently around, snapping the man’s neck.

  Bellowing in shock and anger and heartbreak, Cody squeezed the trigger once, twice, three times, but after the first two reports the Colt only clicked emptily, the sounds of the dry fires like the percussion of a funeral dirge. Cody advanced on the vampire, knowing as he did so how fruitless it was. The first bullet had burrowed a trench through the side of Price’s neck; the second had gone wild. Cody paused six feet from the vampire, the gun suddenly like a kid’s toy in his hand. Smirking in triumph, Price hurled Jack Wilson’s broken body at Cody, driving him backward into the doorway. His father’s head lolled pitifully, and without thought of Adam Price or Marguerite, who still lay unconscious on the bed, Cody scrambled to support Jack Wilson and somehow spare him further indignity.

  Cody was holding his father’s head and upper body in his lap when the tears took hold of him. He pressed his forehead against his father’s and begged the dead man for forgiveness. He knew how ignoble it was to sit there clutching his father while Marguerite needed his protection, but he couldn’t help it. He told Jack Wilson again and again how sorry he was. He kissed his father’s cheeks, his brow.

  After a time, he became aware of Adam Price’s pitiless gaze.

  “So weak,” Price murmured. “After all that has occurred, you’re still so weak.”

  Cody glowered up at Price, his eyes brimming with salty tears. “Why didn’t you go for us earlier? Why’d you wait in that damned cabinet while we killed Willet and his mom?”

  “I don’t measure time the way you do,” Price said unconcernedly. “An epoch for you is a mere instant for me. Every age brings different choices and different opportunities.”

  “You heartless…gutless bastard.”

  Price continued as though Cody hadn’t spoken. “I’ve grown weary of America. A century is a long time for any creature to remain in the same place. The past few decades, I’ve been yearning for Europe. I’ve grown slovenly in my habits. Sloppy. Perhaps this is why you and your father were able to achieve a modicum of success against my servants.”

  Cody cradled his father’s head and bared his teeth at Price. “Killed every goddamn one of them is what we did.”

  “It was time for me to reinvent myself,” Price said, staring down at Marguerite. “Penders, the Seneslavs, Horton…they were useful for a time. Loyal. Very strong. Yet I cannot make a new life if I’m chained to an entourage.” His gaze crawled over Marguerite’s softly susurrating chest. “At most I can take one faithful servant.”

  Cody eased his father’s head to the floor and stood up. He moved around the foot of the bed and stood face to face with Price.

  “You can’t have her,” Cody said.

  Price looked amused. “She’s already mine.”

  “I won’t let you take her.”

  Price laughed softly. “Is this one last ploy to put me off? Do you think you can persuade me you’re not really a coward?”

  If you’re going to die, Cody thought, do it by honoring the man who’s lying back there in the doorway. Die honoring Jack Wilson’s memory.

  Cody stepped closer, only a foot away from Price’s grinning face, and as he did, his boot knocked against something hard. He glanced down and saw, lying among the things that had fallen out of the armoire when P
rice had popped out of it, a wooden object that Cody hadn’t seen in over a decade.

  “What is that?” Price asked, looking at it too.

  Cody reached down, picked up the wooden toy by the peg and its thick block of wood. “It’s a grogger,” Cody said. “I got rid of it when I was fourteen, but my stepmom must’ve rescued it from the garbage.”

  “Absurd-looking thing,” Price remarked.

  Cody gazed down at it fondly. “It’s a noisemaker. See?” And he rotated the peg around the cogged wheel to demonstrate.

  The reaction was immediate. Price recoiled and scowled at the grogger. “Stop that horrid noise.”

  “Why?” Cody asked, swinging the grogger now, the wooden slat clacking frantically over the tensioned cog. “Does it bother you?”

  Price cupped his palms over his ears, his lips become a thin, bloodless line. “I told you to stop that.”

  Cody rotated it faster, a gleeful smile on his face. “I don’t think I will.”

  Price made a grab for it, but Cody stepped nimbly backward. The racket from the noisemaker was frightful, painful even to Cody’s ears in the small bedroom. But the outrage on Price’s face made it worth it.

  “You stupid, puling, brainless boy,” Price said, stepping toward him. The man’s face had begun to alter, the eyes to glow an eerie orange. “Do you truly believe this matters? Does this petty gesture of defiance change anything?”

  “Don’t get too riled,” Cody said, nearing the head of the bed. “You wouldn’t want to lose control, would you?”

  “Miserable wretch,” Price spat. His teeth grew longer, began to taper into wicked points. The lower jaw began to judder, the bones there describing their unnatural metamorphosis. “I will revel in your slow death and then transform your woman into a slavering beast. She will bow to me, she will drink with me, she will—”

  “Will I be allowed to make love to you?” a sultry voice asked.

  Cody and Price both gaped down at Marguerite, who had awakened, who, despite her wounds and ragged appearance, had never looked more voluptuous or more seductive.

  The grogger hung silent in Cody’s hand. He was as transfixed by Marguerite as Price was. She pushed up to lean on her elbows, her supple brown breasts bulging over the bodice of her torn dress. Cody felt a molten wave of desire, but if anything the vampire seemed even more stimulated by the sight of Marguerite’s sumptuous body. Price was absolutely mesmerized.

  Cody began to edge toward the musket. Got him dead center at the jail…

  Price stepped over to the bedside, an unholy brew of bloodlust and carnal desire glittering in his huge eyes. Cody watched in disbelief as Marguerite untied the bodice of her dress, then drew open the white flaps. Her glorious, naked breasts reflected the hellfire from Price’s eyes. Her nipples were large and dark, their tips taut and firm.

  Cody’s fingers closed over the musket. He lifted it as quietly as he could off its pegs. Aim for the heart now…

  Price reached down, the tip of one hooked talon whispering over the flesh between Marguerite’s breasts. The vampire’s long black tongue slithered out, slicked a wet, glimmering trail over his upper lip.

  “She’s not your slave,” Cody said.

  Growling, Price turned. Cody plunged the bayonet into Price’s chest, straight into the vampire’s heart. At the same moment Price lunged for him, and the combined force of the vampire’s momentum and the bayonet’s thrust drove the still-sharp blade through the back of Price’s overcoat. Beyond the spray of blood from the vampire’s back, Cody glimpsed a flurry of movement, Marguerite scrambling off the other side of the bed. A tide of blood sluiced over Cody’s arms. The vampire howled, but the demented orange eyes scarcely glanced at the musket. Price reached out, scrabbling for Cody’s shoulders. Gritting his teeth, Cody shoved harder, the barrel now buried in Price’s gushing chest. Oblivious to whatever pain he might have felt or whatever damage the musket might be doing to his chest, Price seized hold of Cody’s shoulders and tugged him closer. The barrel continued to sink deeper into the vampire’s chest, impaling him as they came together. But Price’s wrath was boundless. The vampire’s face loomed closer, rivers of blood now issuing from his chest and dousing the front of Cody’s body. The black tongue flicked toward Cody’s face, the fulsome stench rotting out of Price enveloping Cody like a death shroud.

  But astonishingly, Cody found that he no longer feared death, no longer feared Price. The vampire might kill him, but at least he’d given Marguerite a chance at survival.

  The vampire’s mouth yawned wider, a measureless hatred in its hellish gaze. Cody thrust the musket deeper, all the way to the hammer, the edge of the trigger guard entering the monster’s chest.

  Price turned to Cody’s right, the vampire’s eyes shuttering wide with horror.

  The scythe blade swept toward Price’s throat, the vampire throwing up a hand—too late—to ward off the blow. The curved blade buried itself deep in Price’s neck, the scythe slicing it most of the way through. Price clawed at the blade, but it was embedded too deeply. Cody let go of the musket, stepped behind the convulsing vampire, and grasped Price’s long brown hair with both hands. Cody yanked down with his full weight. The head tilted sideways, blood pumping upward in a dark, raging fountain. With a vicious tug, Marguerite jerked the scythe free of the vampire’s flesh and raised it again.

  Cody yanked down on Price’s head, which now hung from a single tendril of flesh like an open box lid. Amid the jetting blood and the ugly flaps of mangled flesh, Cody caught a glimpse of Price’s severed windpipe, the pallid stub of cleaved spine.

  “Stand back,” Marguerite commanded.

  Cody stood back.

  With a savage grunt, Marguerite brought down the scythe like an axe. The blade chopped through the remaining connective tissue easily, the lopped-off head thumping to the floor with dull finality.

  Rather than hugging Cody or covering her bare breasts, Marguerite tossed the scythe aside and bent down. She came up holding Price’s head. Before Cody knew what was happening, she marched out of the bedroom and into the main room. Cody followed her, too bewildered to speak. She crossed straight to the hearth, cast the monstrous head onto the logs. Blessedly, the orange eyes and snarl of teeth landed facedown. As Marguerite reached up to the mantle for the stick matches, Cody noted with a shiver how Price’s black tongue had dangled down through the logs so that its tip brushed the floor of the hearth.

  Marguerite lit a match and tossed it in, but it winked out right away. Grimacing, she lit another one, but her hand trembled so violently that it extinguished before she could lower it to the logs.

  Price’s black tongue coiled around her wrist. Marguerite shrieked, yanked her hand away, but the head came with it, tumbling onto the stone of the hearth and sliding nearer to her wrist.

  Cody stomped on Price’s severed head. Marguerite struggled for a moment, whimpering. Then, with a fierce tug, she disengaged her wrist from the snakelike tongue and scrambled against the sofa.

  Careful to grip it by the hair in back, Cody lugged the severed head over to the hearth again and mashed it facedown in the logs.

  When he was certain the head was fixed in place, he padded over to the bookcase, selected a volume at random and began to rip out pages. He bent, and taking care not to let his fingers venture too near the vampire’s mouth, arranged the pages for kindling.

  “Matches,” he said, crouching before the hearth.

  He accepted them from Marguerite, struck one and held it to one of the pages. Immediately, the dry paper curled and blackened, a small but brilliant orange flame licking the wood around it. Cody shifted the match to another page. It was about to burn his fingertips, but he didn’t want to be this close to the vampire’s head any longer than he had to be. While he held the match to the crumpled page, he kept throwing nervous glances at the forest of sharp white teeth, the long, gaping jaw. He waited for the black tongue to slip around his wrist and drag him screaming toward the vampire’s maw, but th
is time the tongue remained motionless. When the flame singed Cody’s fingertips, he finally dropped the match in the hearth and stood back.

  He and Marguerite watched the fire spread. The flames began to catch in Price’s brown hair, and soon the entire head was consumed. Cody’s gaze happened on the book he’d used for kindling. He was unsurprised to see it was Moby-Dick.

  “Is this the end of it?” Marguerite asked, her bleak gaze still riveted to the blazing head.

  “I expect we should burn the rest of them. The heads and the bodies.”

  She nodded. Then her breath caught and she looked at him with startled eyes. “What about the coach?”

  Cody looked at her, frowning.

  “The black coach,” she said, her voice curiously hushed. “We saw someone drive it away. I thought it was Price, but it wasn’t. So who drove it?”

  “Horton,” Cody said.

  Marguerite shook her head, a pained look on her face. “He couldn’t have. Your father cut off—”

  “The figure driving the coach didn’t have a head,” Cody said. “I knew it didn’t look right, but with the distance and the darkness, I couldn’t figure why. Price must’ve put Horton’s body on the bench and then started the team down the trail.”

  “Would the team go without a driver?”

  “Horton had driven that team for years. The horses wouldn’t care if he was headless.” Cody chuckled softly. “I expect we’ll find the coach stranded somewhere a couple miles down the road.”

  Marguerite searched his face. “We’re going to burn Horton’s body too?”

  “You’re damn right we are,” Cody said. “Just as soon as we burn the others.”

  Marguerite nodded slowly. Then she too began to smile.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  It took them the better part of the day to take care of all the bodies. A good deal of that time was spent in locating and corralling the black coach with its headless driver. They took one of his dad’s horses out to search for it and found, unsurprisingly, the black quarter horses had veered off the trail. The search from there had been considerably more challenging, though in the end, the vultures helped lead them to the gulch where the coach had ended up.